Help with MIDI Input from Roland SPD-SX

Using MOD devices
#1

Hi,

There’s been a few posts about this but I still can’t figure it out for the life of me!

I have a Roland SPD-SX that I want to use to turn pedals on and off. The SPD is connected to the serial MIDI In port.

The pedal needs a CC message but the SPD only outputs midi notes.

image
image572×532 40 KB

In this pic you can see the AM synth which is being triggered by the SPD fine, generating sound when it receives a MIDI note as expected.

MIDI toggle does not do anything when it receives a note.

MIDI Note to CC doesn’t do anything either (in this case it is connected to the virtual midi loopback)

I tested the setup with Mindi which works as expected, although I still don’t really get how MIDI Note to CC works!

Any help would be much appreciated, it feels like this should be straightforward but I am really struggling!

#2

Hi Kevin

You say you’ve got it to work with mindi (that is to say you have used the mindi button and set up the cc message and it has successfully got whatever pluginit is you are hoping to control - changed). What is the plugin you are trying to control anyway?

If that is the case, you just have to make sure the midi note to cc produces that cc message. However there are a number of settings you have to set up.

Midi CC has basically two important things: a number and a value (as opposed to a midi note which has a note and a velocity). IIRC, you have to tell the Midi-Note-to-CC plugin, where you want the number and the value to come from.

In your case you want the number to be fixed (to operate just one thing on your target plugin). And since you are using midinotetoggle, I presume you want one tap to turn something on, and the second tap to turn something off (or in midi cc value terms - in the first case the value should be greater than 64 and in the second case, less than 64).

Therefore, would do these things.

  • use mindi with midi loopback to trigger the pedal you want to trigger and note down the channel/cc number/cc value you have used
  • Then create a chain using
    ** a midi filter (which only allows certain notes to come through)
    ** sent into a note toggle
    ** then sent into midi-note-to-cc
  • and send that to both:
    ** midi display (download this plugin if you dont already have it - it will visually show the numbers on screen)
    ** and midi loopback

Then play with the settings of midi-note-to-cc. Set the cc number as a fixed parameter and set the cc value to the volume of the midi note - and make sure your SPD is sending notes with a volume of >64

If this still does not work, then share your pedalboard and I will try to make it work

3 Likes
#3

Hi

what steve said….

but I want to add something.
I do a lot with Midi Control.
I figured out that using CV to control everything is way more flexible and effective.
My Midi notes just trigger a Control to CV. Either on/off or 0-100%. I then can use this Signal and work with Envelopes and so on. The other good thing is, if you want to do changes on the MidiSetup the whole chain is unaffected 'cause you just change the trigger.

HOsen

3 Likes
#4

@steve @HOsen

Thanks so much for your input!

1 Like